Working While a Student

I have had experience working as both a high school and a college student, and I have also had experience with both high school and college without a job. So, which is better? I think it depends on the person, who you are and what your schedule is like can have a big impact on how well you would do as a student and an employee. For me, it depends on my schedule for the semester, but I prefer having no job if I can. In my situation, I am a music student, which music in itself is a job, but school and practicing music requires time that could be taken away from me if I had a job. I got my first job as a high school senior. I was a part time student and a family friend asked me to stop by in the middle of the day to check on their dog while they were away at work. It was that school year that I got another job (my first real job, you could say). This job was as an employee for a quick service restaurant. Quick service means you order and pay at the counter and the employees bring the food to the table; there may or may not be a drive thru. This job was good, not the greatest, but I was working with good people. In the months leading up to me quitting, I did not enjoy going to work really at all. As I would get ready for work, I yearned for the moment that I would stand in that spot taking my work clothes off. That has got to be a bad sign. I decided to quit at about the time that I was gearing up to transfer from a community college to a four-year university. I would still be living at home (although I later transferred to another university in a different area), but I ended up having three upper level courses, two of which were honors. I could have managed a job, but I would have had to sacrifice time in some other area, be it music, sleep, or my personal sanity. As nice as it is to have money, a job takes time. At that job, I usually worked Friday evenings from 5-10. That’s not a bad schedule, except it involved me driving out to a busy area right at rush hour and then working on my feet, in a busy drive thru, alone, for five hours, often without any breaks, even though I was scheduled for one. It was a five hour shift that took up more than six hours of my night. I decided at that point that I would rather work on building up a business that could be done from home. So, I quit, and while I’d be lying if I said I never looked back, when I do wish that I still had that job, I remind myself of how miserable it made me.

Have you worked as a student? Did you enjoy it or did it make you go crazy? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter!